Interview with Blair Bobier by Steven Hill
Oregon became the 33rd US state in 1859 and today is the ninth largest and 27th most populous state with 4.2 million people. In the last few years, the Beaver State has emerged as the nation’s leading trailblazer for political reform. This year the state legislature voted on the final day of the legislative session to pass House Bill 2004, which puts a proposal to use ranked choice voting (RCV) for federal and statewide races (including president) on the November 2024 ballot. This was the first time in modern US history that a state legislature has allowed voters to decide whether to use an alternative electoral method for its elections. As a precursor to that bold move, Oregon’s largest city, Portland, voted last November by a 57% margin to pass proportional representation (as: proportional ranked choice voting) for local elections, following a near-unanimous charter commission recommendation. That same election saw Multnomah County, Oregon’s most populous (where Portland is located), approve single-winner RCV for county offices. This all has amounted to a small revolution, and it didn’t happen overnight. It took years of groundwork and patient, multi-partisan coalition-building. At the center of much of this activity for the past 25 years has been Blair Bobier, one of Oregon’s and the nation’s early proponents of ranked choice voting. Blair is an attorney by occupation, having worked professionally as a public defender and then for Legal Aid, which provides legal services to low-income Oregonians. He also has specialized in election law and was a co-founder of the Pacific Green Party of Oregon. Steven Hill spoke with Blair by Zoom on June 29, 2023 a few days after the Oregon legislature voted to put RCV on the statewide ballot. The following transcript has been condensed due to limited space in Green Horizon.
[The full original interview can be found at:https://democracysos.substack.com/p/interview-with-blair-bobier-on-oregon]
Steven Hill (SH): Oregon has become arguably the national leader in regard to political reform, making huge strides in recent years. To what do you attribute this sudden surge in success and interest?
Blair Bobier (BB): It’s been a combination of factors. I’d like to think we got the ball rolling here in Benton County, where we got RCV on the ballot in 2016 for implementation in 2020. Then Corvallis, which is the largest city in Benton County and a university town, did it on their own through the city council in 2022. Then Portland and Multnomah County followed suit via ballot measures in November 2022. And now we’ve had the state legislature put RCV on the ballot for November 2024. I think some people look at this as something that’s happened suddenly. But I liken it to the singer-songwriter who’s been playing in dive bars for 30 years, and then one song gets played on the radio and it’s an overnight sensation!
I think that our success in Benton County made things legitimate for the rest of the state. We started reaching out to different groups in the community. We got a diversity of support, we worked closely with the county officials, and we got it passed. Corvallis went next because it is within Benton County. They said: We can do this here because the county administers the city elections.
SH: They didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. They just had to do it by a vote of the council.
BB: Right. And after that, I think what caused things to kind of mushroom is the interest that followed in Portland. Most people have considered the Portland city council and government to be pretty dysfunctional. So the City Club, an influential nonprofit civic group, started looking at reforming city government, and one of the areas they looked at was what type of election method should be used. They considered proportional ranked choice voting. They also looked at multi-member districts, and ultimately a lot of what they came up with, in terms of their research and recommendations, was embraced by the Portland Charter Review Committee, which was empaneled a couple of years ago. The review committee then came forward with the proposal for proportional ranked choice voting for city council, multi-member districts, expanding the size of the council, and electing the mayor directly by ranked choice voting.
Portland is located in Multnomah County, which had its own charter review committee going. So in the last election, both proportional and single-winner RCV were approved for use in Portland and in Multnomah County. Particularly for the Portland effort, there was this really diverse, broad coalition that was formed. And it was led and centered by communities of color. That, I think, has been one of the more important components of the success. When we shifted to a statewide measure, we were able to have many of those same organizations leading the effort in the state legislature.
SH: Could you say a bit more about the coalition-building, and about building that groundwork?
BB: We have a relatively small nonprofit, Oregon Ranked Choice Voting, which formed after the Benton County success with the idea of taking things to a broader level. We provided technical support, logistical support, and legal support. It was Portland United for Change that put together the coalition that was at the center stage.
SH: In Oregon, the movement for electoral reform was for many years led by the Green Party, since you were one of the founders and leaders of the Greens in Oregon. How did the Democrats get on board?
BB: When we started talking in Benton County about getting RCV implemented, some people were dreaming pretty big and said: we can do this statewide. And I said, yes, eventually, but right now we don’t have the resources. But I knew there was a relatively new local state Democratic representative from Benton County, Dan Rayfield, who was interested in election reform and what we were calling instant runoff voting—IRV—back then. He started working his way up through the ranks in the Capitol. Now he’s the Speaker of the House! RCV was one of his priority bills.
SH: Wow, that was a great stroke of luck.
BB: This wouldn’t have happened but for, I think, all the different efforts and coalition-building creating the groundswell. I don’t think there’s been a second thought that Dan and I were from different political parties. In fact, in Benton County, I believe the guy who was Dan’s Republican opponent also endorsed the local ballot measure. There was a Libertarian running for some local office, maybe even against Dan, and he endorsed it. So we started building this multi-partisan group.
SH: Dan Rayfield … yes, he’s Speaker, he has leverage, but he’s got a lot of other priorities. He’s got to use that leverage for not just ranked choice voting. How did the rest of the Democrats get on board for RCV?
BB: The folks within the statewide coalition did an amazing job of lobbying. They get kudos from all sorts of people in the legislature about the work that they did. And one clever thing that someone within the coalition came up with, and which many in the Capitol reacted positively to, was that the coalition came to the Capitol and had legislative staff voting on and ranking things—like favorite State Park or best place to get a drink in Salem, the capital. Sometimes they went around with candy or taffy or different kinds of treats to rank. And they went around with a ballot every week, maybe twice weekly, and legislators got to expect to see the ranked choice voting people. That brought a lot of attention to it!
In the State Senate it went down to the wire. The Republicans in the Senate chose to do a walkout, so the Senate didn’t have a quorum. The Republicans wanted to block certain bills around pro-choice legislation and firearm regulation. It took a lot of closed-door negotiations to bring them back into the building and to appease them. And then they had hundreds of bills that were backlogged. Our RCV bill was one of the ones heard on the last day of the legislative session before they had to adjourn for the year. And because it had been amended in the Senate Rules Committee, it had to go back to the House for concurrence just on the amendment. All that happened on the last day of the legislative session!
SH: It’s hard not to notice that the state legislators applied RCV to every office but their own. Federal races, including president, and state executive offices, yes, but not their own state legislative seats. Was that due to constitutional restraints, or was it more of a situation of the state legislators saying, “We’ll try it out on some other offices first, let them be the guinea pigs?”
BB: I think that that came out of the sausage-making process. In part, it was because the county clerks and elections officials wanted to limit the number of races that it would apply to. So that, according to them, the ballots wouldn’t get longer and more unwieldy. Ultimately, the coalition decided to focus on the races where RCV would make the most difference. Most legislative races typically have only two candidates at best. So the coalition said: let’s focus this on statewide and federal races.
SH: That’s really interesting. It’s actually kind of a tacit admission about the winner-take-all, single-seat district system … there’s rarely any competition in the vast majority of these legislative races, so why bother trying to change it? Let’s do it only in races where there’s actually competition. Anyway, this is a huge victory. Even getting it on the ballot is a huge victory. Nevada is also on the ballot. So, for proponents of RCV, it’s going to be an exciting November in 2024!
Living a Life of Public Service
SH: Blair, shifting gears just a bit, I’d like to ask you, what has driven you all these years to continue with your advocacy?
BB: In terms of these kinds of democracy reforms, initially I was looking at opening up the system, getting more voices at the table, because things haven’t changed a whole lot since Dr. King was talking about the triple evils of poverty, racism, and militarism. To me, it’s kind of a bit of reverse engineering: If our government is perpetuating these catastrophic societal situations, can we get more voices into government? How? Well, I went to a lecture by this guy named Steve Hill 30-some years ago (laughter). I learned about proportional representation, and that’s actually what interested me at first. And then the whole instant runoff voting movement took off and that seemed like something that was doable and applicable and achievable for local and state offices. It just made sense to focus on that.
SH: Electoral reforms are crucial to the Green Party’s future, so you moved into Green politics in a fairly major way. Do you have any lessons that you’ve learned that you think could be imparted to a new up-and-coming generation of reformers?
BB: Activism is a marathon and not a sprint. That’s one thing I learned. Persistence pays off. It’s good to dream big and not let people say you can’t succeed. Focus on specific projects and find good people to work with. And I’d say be open to coalitions and realize that the proverbial politics does sometimes make strange bedfellows, because the first person I approached to organize the Benton County campaign was a Democrat. And then there was someone from the Independent Party of Oregon, the Libertarians, and a Republican. You’ve got to be open to working with people who think differently than you.
SH: I’m from California. Many there are excited to see our neighbor to the north taking this big step. Do you have any advice for us?
BB: The League of Women Voters of Oregon has been looking at election methods for years and their support has been critical. In our coalition we have a lot of groups—labor organizations, the Latino Community Association, Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, Tribal Democracy Project, a farmworkers group, the Rural Organizing Project, Urban League of Portland, Common Cause, Community Alliance of Tenants, Unitarian Universalist Voices for Justice.
SH: I think for Los Angeles, and “multi-everything” cities in general, where it’s really hard to give adequate representation to all the various diverse communities using winner-take-all districts, passing proportional ranked choice voting via a charter commission might be the only way to get something like this done. You need some sort of commission that has weighed in to bring the different sectors and interests to the table and confer some legitimacy. For example, labor. I see you had a lot of support from labor unions. How did that come about?
BB: Folks in labor are already part of or connected with some of the other coalition groups. So there’s cross-pollination going on. I think some of the unions use RCV for their own internal elections.
SH: That’s pretty key, since it allows many people to get used to RCV.
BB: Proportional representation would be the next step beyond that. I think one of the benefits of ranked choice voting is that it opens people’s minds to using a different type of voting method.
SH: Blair, thanks so much, it’s been great talking with you. It’s going to be an exciting year as Oregon prepares for the ballot measure in November 2024. Best of luck with it.
STEVEN HILL is the chief editor and contributor @DemocracySOS. He has authored seven books, including 10 Steps to Repair US Democracy; Fixing Elections; and Europe’s Promise. Steve was a co-founder and former assistant director of FairVote. His writings and interviews have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, C-Span, and others.